"Dropla"

Fat Possum

Artists:

Youth Lagoon's The Year of Hibernationwas an airy LP dedicated to the art of the slow build. With "Dropla", the six-minute first offering from Wondrous Bughouse, Trevor Powers once again delivers emotional heft, this time with slightly more full-bodied instrumentation. Yes, there's a familiar echoing, lilting introduction, but it's quickly followed by firm percussion. And while Powers' voice is no longer marked by a wispy, ghostly tone, his lyrics are tender as ever. "I reach my arm across the bed and hold your hand," he sings before noting that somebody's out to seize their land. It's a small moment, but it makes the central, persistently repeated phrase all the more devastating. "You'll never die," sings Powers over and over again, sounding assertively fragile. With each repetition of that sentence, it becomes increasingly unclear whether he's offering an easily broken optimistic promise or a fearful, anxious wish.

In the final moments of the song, Powers revisits the echoing, ethereal aesthetic of Hibernation. Instead of slow-building to a big percussive climax, a la "Posters" or "July", "Dropla" flips the game altogether. The percussive bulk in the beginning leads into the atmospheric outro, and in the last seconds, an acoustic stringed instrument (a mandolin, maybe), which sat quietly in the background of the track, comes to the forefront and pulls the song to a stop. It's a testament to Powers' musicianship and the production wizardry of Ben H. Allen, but it's also an appropriately powerful finish for the song's heartbreaking story.